When Naomi Klein, the author of No Logo, was little she was enamored of the brightly lit signs she saw from her family's car: McDonald's, Burger King, Texaco÷and especially the bright yellow Shell sign, which she ways was "So bright and cartoon-like I was convinced that, if I could climb up and touch it, it would be like touching something from another dimension÷from the world of TV."

For those wondering where and how to shop, reading No Logo can help you discover the history of "logo" culture. How is it possible that the safe, slick world of the Shell sign has become a prison for millions of people all over the world? Naomi Klein's book carefully documents our journey from a "real" culture driven by customs and societies of peoples to one where logo, not even product, take the center stage and actually become culture.

Logos, she says, are "the closest thing we have to an international language, by force of ubiquity." The McDonald's sign÷or the Coca-Cola symbol÷are recognizable by most of the world's six billion people. The selling, these days, isn't just in magazines or on billboards: in some Scandinavian countries you can get "free" long-distance calls if you consent to ads cutting into your telephone conversations; NASA has solicited ads to run on its space stations. There's no escape.

No Space, No Choice, No Jobs
What has happened to culture in our world? Has it been kidnapped, and by whom? Klein tells us "According to the 1998 United Nations Human Development Report, the growth in global ad spending Înow out paces the growth of the world economy by one-third.' This pattern is a by-product of the firmly held belief that brands need continuous and constantly increasing advertising just to stay in the same place."

Rather than merely bankrolling someone else's content, corporations are experimenting with the much-coveted role of being "content providers" on the Internet. Corporations advertise their "brand" at rock concerts, with rock stars in the background, assuring concert attendees that they are a part of a culture which is not that of rock and roll but that of the sponsor. The brand expands, the logo grabs center stage. "Cool hunters" are everywhere searching for what is cool so that it can be neatly packaged and sold back to citizen-consumers. Oftentimes political movements become what is cool. Rather than having any real solutions that come from shedding light on certain issues they become "cool tools" to sell more. It is easy to understand, with schools struggling to deliver a decent education in spite of increased funding cuts, why they fall prey to a corporation that promises fancy technological tools in exchange for captive student attention. Channel 1, commercial "news" in classrooms, and funding for sports, put logos everywhere in the school environment. Students are reacting though, and becoming irate÷especially when ads appear in the stalls of bathrooms!

Klein says "· these strange creations awakened something in me that I've since come to think of as deep longing for the seductions of fake." Malls have become our modern day town square. Our most constant cross-cultural tool has become sitcoms, movie characters or star and commercial sayings or jingles. If we are only slightly aware of this the brand masters÷the purveyors÷are very aware of this form of culture. As an example of culture branding, McDonald's continues to harass small restaurant owners of Scottish descent over name choices and has waged a 26-year battle against a man called Ronald McDonald whose McDonald's Family Restaurant in a small town in Illinois was founded in 1956. When will we say enough! It seems we are enmeshed in a one-way "dialogue."

Perhaps the takeover of private space by corporations or the plastering of common space by advertising or monolithic business practices are not enough for citizen anger and reaction, but the reality of "no jobs left" after most manufacturing has shifted from the US to work camps in third and fourth world countries may become the deciding factor. Of the jobs that remain, retailers like Wal-Mart (which claims a "family" standard by censoring music and other products) do not pay a living wage, placing families in jeopardy. The "No Logo" consciousness is fraught with this sort of contradiction. Lip service to caring about the family does not translate in "real life" when employees cannot afford to subsist. How far will we allow this degree of corporate censorship and hypocrisy to go?

Klein visited factories in the Philippines which produce products for our consumption. She learned they have rules against talking and smiling. There is forced overtime, but no job security÷it's "no work, no pay" when the orders don't come in. Toilets are padlocked except during two 15-minute breaks per day÷seamstresses sewing clothes for western chain stores told Klein that they have to urinate in plastic bags under their machines. Carmelita Alonzo, who sewed clothes for the Gap and Liz Claiborne, had a two-hour commute home, and died after being denied time off for pneumonia, a common illness in these factories. Many of these work forces, made up mostly of fourteen to nineteen year old females, live four to a room the size of prison cells. Many of these factories are in "free trade zones" which are segmented off from the rest of the community by barbed wire and other forms of security. Although workers would like to attend school, they are prevented by the long hours. As Klein points out, people are now demanding to know why, if the big brands have so much power and influence over price and marketing, they do not also have the power to demand and enforce ethical labor standards from such suppliers?

Nike paid Michael Jordan more in 1992 for endorsing its trainers ($20 million) than the company paid its entire 30,000-strong Indonesian workforce for making them. Third world workers who sew $150 Nike shoes for 12 cents each have no money left over to send to families they have been lured from home to support. Comparing the salary of Michael Eisner, a CEO of Disney ($9,783/hour), with that of a Haitian worker who stitches Disney merchandise (28 cents/hour) casts Disney in a darker light than it's image suggests.

In the US, a job at McDonald's brings low-pay, no benefits, no union recognition and no guarantee your job will be there in the morning. At Wal-Mart, "full time" means just 28 hours a week and the average annual wage is a meager $10,920. "You can buy two grande mocha cappuccinos with my hourly salary," says Laurie Bonang, a worker in Starbucks. Microsoft now has one-third of its workforce working as temps. As Klein says, "It was Microsoft, with its famous employee stock-option plan, that developed and fostered the mythology of Silicon Gold; but it is also Microsoft that has done the most to dismantle it."

No Logo
A group of African-American 13-year-olds from the Bronx, the company's target market and the one exploited by it to get a cool image, found out that the trainers they bought for $180 cost $5 to make. What followed was a mass dumping of their old Nike trainers outside New York's Nike Town. One boy, reports Klein, looked straight into the TV news camera and said, "Nike, we made you. We can break you."

As more young people realize that they are being patsies for major corporations who do not give a damn for them, Klein says "Youth style and attitude are among the most effective wealth generators in our entertainment economy, but real live youth are being used around the world to pioneer a new kind of disposable work force. It is in this volatile context that the branding economy is becoming the political equivalent of a sign hanging on the back of the body corporate that says ÎKick Me.'"

The new anti-corporate activism takes many forms. All over the world people are protesting the rise of corporate power. High school and university students are boycotting brands which have invaded public space like cafeterias and gymnasiums. Students have spoken back by pushing Pepsi out as the drink of any generation for its insidious relationship with Burma (now Myanmar). Three logos which have been under attack are the swoosh, the shell and the arches. The UK's "McLibel" trial, which began in 1990, hurt McDonald's very seriously÷even though the firm eventually won the case÷because it forced them to be open about their business practices. After suing two British environmentalists (a single dad and a woman farmer) for libel they experienced the longest trial in British history, with enlightening information revealed, like when one executive claimed that Coca-Cola is nutritious because it is "providing water, and I think that is part of a balanced diet," and another who said that McDonald's contribution to landfill sites is "a benefit, otherwise you will end up with lots of vast empty gravel pits all over the country." Opposition to Shell Oil Company's involvement with the Nigerian military government that devastated Ogoni lands and executed writer Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1994 focused on issues of freedom of expression. Greenpeace won incredible public support, and Shell ultimately lost.

This book helps one to understand the crimes that dominating corporations are perpetrating worldwide, while in our country, countless are jobless and homeless as production has moved to these more lucrative production job-camps. Reading No Logo can assist one in personally taking steps to end slavery around the world by buying fewer sweatshop items, shopping less, and avoiding the "big box" store. Don't be afraid to ask questions while you are shopping. Lend this book to someone that you know and love. Tell your friends. In the end we are facing what Moses faced with the Israelites: it is time to move into the desert for the sake of freedom and dignity.

No Logo: Money, Marketing and the Growing Anti-Corporate Movement, Naomi Klein, Picador USA, St. Martin's Press, 480 pages; $17

Suzi Aufderheide is a single mother of six who has been a media activist for more than 20 years. An originator of RVTV cable in Ashland, Oregon, Suzi is Treasurer on the Board of the Alliance for Community Media, Northwest Region.